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Correct if I’m wrong here, but is this article just “Economist comments on something it has been claimed the Harris campaign team said, but is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in writing or in speeches”?
If she planned on taxing billionaires, she’d be shouting it from the rooftops. That’s a popular policy. It’s not going to be something she keeps in her back pocket and then when she’s president goes SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKERS. Not that she could do it by EO anyway, but honestly, this is so far from a reality it just barely qualifies as news.
If she planned on taxing billionaires, she’d be shouting it from the rooftops. That’s a popular policy.
Not among corporate mega-donors, it isn’t! Keeping it in her back pocket – not until she’s president, but until shortly before the election and, crucially, after their checks clear – is exactly what she should do.
Nobody would be happier than me to see that happen, but seeing how nobody’s ever done something like that before I have my doubts. Can’t remember the last Democrat that actually got more radical than the platform they ran on. Certainly wasn’t anybody in the last 50 years.
The article cited the 2025 budget [PDF]. It’s under the section “Proposes a Minimum Tax on Billionaires”.
To finally address this glaring inequity, the Budget includes a 25 percent minimum tax on the wealthiest 0.01 percent, those with wealth of more than $100 million.
Though the Harris campaign is not directly mentioned, I think we may assume it’s coming from both Harris and Biden.
This is actually really helpful clarification, I did just miss some of that. It’s no wealth tax, but it’s better than nothing.
“Top Economist” is a funny phrase. Kinda like saying “leading soothsayer”.
Don’t think I don’t have sympathy or respect for the economist. I just notice that it’s the only academic discipline that pledges and is expected to predict the future.
Just like experts in criminal trials, economists can be selected to prove what you already know. And just like horoscopes, it’s all very convincing until you measure the predictions against reality.
If Zucman is a fan, this is great news indeed. A 25% minimum tax on billionaire wealth sounds great, and with broad support, as the article notes (even 51% of Republicans).
Much better news, too, for those of us who only saw this part reported on til now:
The campaign spokesperson called the move—which would still leave the corporate tax rate lower than it was when Trump first took office in 2017—a “fiscally responsible way to put money back in the pockets of working people and ensure billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share.” (emphasis mine)
IIRC, the corporate tax rate was slashed by Trump from 30-something percent, maybe 35%, to something like 18%, so to see that Harris was not interested in reversing this Trump tax cut fully (only to 25%) felt til now like yet another depressing instance of the ratchet effect, where the right does what they do, and neoliberals only undo part of it when they are in power.
I’m just a millionaire. I’m worth diddly squat “on paper” because I intend to stay a millionaire. This isn’t a difficult fiscal apparatus to create. Billionaires have much more effective methods at their disposal.
It doesn’t matter what the tax rates are so long as the loopholes remain wide open and there’s very little enforcement.
Loopholes are a consequence of tax law and enforcement. In theory, you can raise a lot of money for popular programs by aggressively pursuing tax cheats. In practice, we’ve built a society that hates the idea of taxation and yields social and financial rewards to people who open and defend new loopholes in the system.
At what point does the neighborhood PTA put two and two together, to conclude a big cut to property taxes must necessitate a big cut to school budgets? Idk. Seems like redder and poorer states have been forced to square up with this reality sooner. But these states also tend to be captured by the corporate interests that dominate their political systems.
But the real methods that the billionaire class have to stay free of taxation and regulation are in mass media and corporate lobbying. You can only do so much to hide your assets without rendering them valueless. Apple can bury its trillions in cash in a big hole in the ground, but then they can’t spend it on anything for the business. The real way to free up that cash is to convince voters that a big tax cut for repatriating all that money will benefit the country more than a higher tax rate on the Jobs Family Trust.
You can only do so much to hide your assets without rendering them valueless.
non sequitur. My assets and earnings are concurrently mine and not mine in accordance with state and federal law. Nothing is hidden or devalued.
The methods by which businesses evade taxation routinely place the assets out of reach for general spending and utilization. This reduces their value to the business, sometimes even beyond what they’d save if they simply ate the tax bill.
If you’re not doing that, I’m not surprised. Its very rarely a productive proposition unless your assets are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
If all I ever did was tell people what I think I know then I’d never have became a millionaire, let alone protected my assets and earnings so well.
Ah, see, I just stuck all my money in the S&P and rode the historic overblown equities returns.
But I’m sure you’ve got a special mysterious secret that made your million a little more special.
I just stuck all my money in the S&P and rode the historic overblown equities returns.
Hard to beat.
I’m sure you’ve got a special mysterious secret that made your million(s)
Yes, in both the making and the protecting.
for realsies this time? is anyone really expecting this to happen? is this really news?
i mean come fucking on.
is anyone really expecting this to happen?
Something’s got to give. The hard split with Russia and the increasing soft split with China is threatening the global dominance of the petro-dollar. At some point, the US is going to need to in-source large parts of its economy, and that’s going to require public sector investment in a period of retreating dollar-dominance. That means either we gut spending on education, transportation, and health care (which would undermine re-industrialization at home) or we raise taxes.
Twelve years ago, you had Mitt Romney talking about putting more lower-class American “skin in the game” by imposing a higher taxes to cover the 47% of Americans who don’t owe income taxes. That was a prelude to the modern moment, which we’d been kinda-sorta fortunate enough to forestall by deepening our trade relations with “enemy” nations and riding a new DotCom bubble out of the COVID crisis.
But now we’ve got serious revenue problems at the federal and state levels. We’ve cut too deeply on upper class taxes, and our political incentives are only to cut deeper. Gotta make that up from somewhere, or you’re back to another inflationary spiral as the US floods with its own cheap money.
